Drop The Chamber

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know full well that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s hostility to environmental solutions is nothing new. To give just a couple of examples, the Chamber litigated against the Clean Air Act; it co-sponsored a sham study that President Trump later cited to justify withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord; it has sued the EPA at least 15 times; and it once even infamously called for a “Scopes Monkey Trial of the 21st century” to put climate science on trial. Public Citizen even debated the U.S. Chamber on NBC’s Meet the Press over Obama’s EPA plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Others have taken notice of the Chamber throwing its weight around in the energy arena, including Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). In a recent letter to Pope Francis, Sen. Whitehouse highlighted how the Pope’s global goal of climate action and emissions reductions is being undercut in the United States by the massive lobbying power of Big Oil. Sen. Whitehouse even explicitly called out the Chamber’s role in Big Oil’s sabotage of efforts at climate solutions, noting that “[g]roups like the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and others have been employed as adversaries of meaningful climate legislation, in some cases with little apparent support for their opposition from the majority of the companies that make up their membership.”

The senator hit the nail on the head when it comes to the role the U.S. Chamber plays in propping up Big Oil’s lobbying efforts. The Chamber is collectively receiving millions of dollars from ExxonMobil, Chevron, Conoco Philips, Occidental Petroleum, Philips 66, Hess, Apache, Tesoro Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Marathon Petroleum, and Noble Energy—and those are just the companies we know about because of their own spending disclosures, given that the Chamber does not disclose its donors. All of this adds up to massive lobbying power in the legislative sphere directed toward Big Oil’s interests, as the Chamber was, in 2017, the largest lobbying organization by spending in the country.

For its part, the Chamber is not at all ashamed of its role in propping up polluting energy sources to the exclusion of clean energy solutions that could ameliorate the effects of climate change or slow it down. Earlier this month, Chamber president Thomas J. Donohue published a blog post entitled “America Seizes Control of Its Energy Destiny,” celebrating the U.S.’s massively renewed focus on fossil fuel extraction and supply “bolstered by the Trump administration’s emphasis on pro-growth energy policies.” In other words, the Big Oil companies that make up the Chamber’s members and donors stand to profit hugely off of a shameless return to promoting fossil fuels to the detriment of green, renewable energy sources—and our environment.

Donohue’s post also promotes the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute, which works to “unify policymakers, regulators, business leaders and the American public” behind a Big Oil-friendly energy agenda. The Institute proudly touts buzzwords like “innovation,” “clean energy,” and “efficiency,” but the actual policies it advocates for are just the opposite. For example, it calls for offshore drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) that represent the same things Big Oil has always wanted: domination of the U.S. energy market to maximize profit, with no regard for the environmental destruction caused along the way.

True to form, the Chamber has also been painting the fossil fuel industry as the put-upon victim of vicious attacks by some massive opposition out to get them. In a recent post called “The Climate Change Tort Racket,” the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform wrote that “[p]laintiffs’ attorneys and left-leaning politicians are ganging up to shake down big oil.” The post asserts that these big bad plaintiffs are seeking to rob the poor oil industry of its resources, “looking for quick cash.” This, of course, ignores the plainly observable reality that Big Oil is a lobbying behemoth, armed with all of the legal power that the money of corporate mammoths can buy. Big Oil is Goliath, not David. Not to mention that Big Oil’s business is threatening all of human civilization with runaway global warming, and Big Oil has known about the threat longer than just about anyone and has been actively lying about it.

As Sen. Whitehouse’s letter to Pope Francis makes clear, the Big Oil lobby in the U.S., as propped up by the likes of the U.S. Chamber, has been an immovable obstacle in the way of the United States meeting its global obligations to reduce carbon emissions and promote climate solutions. Through blocking meaningful climate legislation, and through lobbying an extremely corporate-friendly Republican-controlled White House and Congress to remove barriers on the fossil fuel industry and deter them from alternative energy sources, the hope for the U.S. to be a global leader on climate issues seems grim.

Still, all hope is not lost. Nearly half of the Chamber’s board members have taken pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and a number of companies have already left the Chamber over its environmental policies. Customers who buy products from otherwise forward-thinking companies speaking out is one of the best ways to create enough momentum to get our nation’s leaders to finally stand up to Big Oil, fully embrace clean, renewable energy and become a force for positive global impact on mitigating climate change. By pressuring the Chamber’s members to #DropTheChamber and signing the petition to urge Pepsi, Disney, and Gap to stop funding the Chamber, the public can play a major role in moving the 800 pound gorilla that is the Chamber away from its current status quo of squashing climate solutions.

It will likely not surprise you that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not too fond of unions. The ability for workers to collectively bargain and improve the conditions of their employment is a threat to the bottom lines of the corporations that make up the Chamber’s membership. The Chamber is motivated to block the power of unions by its desire for corporations to have the ability to keep wages low for their workforce, to limit workplace safety protections, and to make sure that workers can’t fight back.

What you may not know, however, is that the Chamber also opposes other, non-union labor initiatives. Enter worker centers. Worker centers are groups of working people from certain sectors who do not have the legal right to collectively bargain, but are nevertheless an important force in advocating for the rights of workers and their communities. Worker centers might organize for better wages and benefits, or they might educate the public about injustices such as racism in the labor market. They do not have the same legal status as a union, but they provide a valuable safety net to workers who do not or cannot belong to a union.

Apparently, the Chamber is outraged by even that level of worker protection. They have taken up the mantle of impugning worker centers with the ultimate goal of doing away with them. In April, the Chamber released a report entitled “Worker Centers: Union Front Groups and the Law.” In it, the Chamber lays out the argument that worker centers are “union front groups”—that is, that they are secretly unions going by another name and should be regulated the same way unions are. This is transparently absurd: worker centers exist specifically to serve populations that are not served by unions, and they lack the power to collectively bargain, which is one of the defining attributes of unions. The Chamber would have us ignore this clear distinction because it is inconvenient for its narrative.

As is so often the case, this effort to dismantle the power of worker centers by the Chamber mirrors a similar effort by the GOP. House Republicans have vowed to make the same changes to worker centers’ legal classification as the Chamber is advocating for.

Of course, if the Chamber and its buddies in the GOP truly felt that worker centers are secretly unions, they could say that centers should have all of the same collective bargaining power as unions do. But of course they won’t do that, because these arguments are in bad faith: the Chamber and its allies know full well that worker centers are merely a minimal line of defense for workers who have nothing else to protect them, and are unable to tolerate even that meager level of worker protections.

It should not surprise us that the Chamber takes such consistently anti-worker stances. However, it actually may surprise the corporations that are members of the Chamber and proclaim to care about their workers’ lives and well-being. For instance, McDonald’s and Gap both having sections on their websites about respecting the human rights of their workers. These companies should take a long look at the Chamber’s appalling record on workers’ rights and withdraw their funding and support for the Chamber.

This Earth Day, we hope you will take some time to join with us in reflecting on the effect our lifestyles have on the planet and to make positive changes. We would also like for corporations that claim to be environmentally responsible to have that same introspection and take forward-thinking action.

Earlier this month, Australian miner BHP Billiton finalized its decision that it would be withdrawing from the World Coal Association over differences on climate change. Notably, it also announced it would remain a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Previously, the miner has been an outspoken advocate for the Paris Climate Agreement and was publicly considering leaving the Chamber over the Chamber’s lobbying against the Agreement. Even a brief glance at the Chamber’s shameful history on environmental issues reveals what a mistake BHP has made in staying with the Chamber.

The Chamber habitually throws around its more than $272 million in corporate-donated money and its significant lobbying weight to pursue a climate agenda beholden to the fossil fuel industry and Big Oil. It has frequently stood in opposition to environmental safeguards like the Clean Water Rule, the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, and the Stream Protection Rule. It has brought a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to block implementation of the Clean Power Plan. In fact, the Chamber sued the EPA 15 times during a recent three-year period.

Most notoriously, the Chamber has routinely attempted to block efforts to combat climate change. In 2009, the Chamber infamously called for a “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” to put climate science on trial. It has also funded a now-debunked study on the Paris Climate Agreement that dramatically overstated the potential costs of the Agreement and ignored its benefits. President Trump later cited this sham “study” as part of his rationale to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

BHP’s website has an entire section on the environment, with subsections devoted to “climate change” and “water” among other topics. Its continued support of the Chamber, however, is in effect condoning the Chamber’s constant attacks on the environment.

If BHP is truly committed to engaging on climate and green energy issues, it should take a consistent stance in which organizations it will refuse to do business with. A number of companies have already left the Chamber over its environmental policies including its anti-climate advocacy. No company that proclaims to care about the environment, sustainability, public health or the planet should remain a member.

This is why we call on the many corporations that fund it to #DropTheChamber. This Earth Day, please sign the petition to tell companies like Gap, Pepsi, and Disney to make a better decision than BHP and quit the Chamber and leave its fossilized thinking behind and put our planet on a better path to the future.